trying to keep the chaos to a minimum. okay. rachel, thank you very much for joining us on this. rachel mursky, an eyewitness. ali, what do we know now? you updated us, but let s bring us up to speed. we re getting more details now. we re hearing it was a white van that jumped the sidewalk and plowed into several people in that popular street in barcelona, which is very popular with tourists. we just heard from the eyewitness, you were talking to, we re also getting unconfirmed reports, i have to stress unconfirmed reports, from spanish media that said witnesses saw the assailant jump out of the white van and run off from the scene of the incident. we don t know if the police have caught him or if he s still at large. but people are saying that they saw a man jump out of a white rental van and run off from the scene.
this country, whether they re african-american, whether they re women, whether they re gay, who are facing prejudice on a daily basis. so, for you, the battle doesn t seem to have held you back. that doesn t make it irrelevant for others for whom they are still being held back today because of the color of their skin or gender or sexuality. i think if harriet tubman can take people from the deep south, slavery, while she would have been raped or killed or whatever, and would help people escape to the north, i can do my part to overcome this pestilence, this disgusting racist bigots to help other people rise. and we must be positive and help other people rise. you, my friend, are a great american. thank you so much. retired nasa astronaut leeland melvin. thank you. we have more on that breaking news we just spoke about, a few minutes ago from spain. a van crashed into a crowd of people in a popular tourist area in barcelona. live on the phone, witness rachel mursky, an american
tourist. what did you see? i was walking down the street, a busy street, and suddenly everyone started screaming and run ing over each other, people were falling over each other. i saw a man fall on top of his girlfriend and cover her and so naturally i started running as well. and then once that had died down, i went back and there were hundreds of cops, like, streaming up. i tried to find what was happening, tried to see the van people were talking about a van. but it was chaos. what tell me about the police response, what you said you saw lots of cops as soon as you looked back. what is the situation or what was it last you saw it in terms of people s reaction and police? yeah. so the police were streaming up on motorcycles, and in cars, the street has the center walkway and then the two sides of the street where cars can go up. they completely blocked it off. there were ambulances and tons
spain and official sources quoted by news organizations in spain, it looks as if from what we re able to piece together this looks more like a terrible another terrible act, another terrible deliberate act and not something that has happened accidentally. and, keir, joining us now, jim cavanaugh, msnbc law enforcement analyst. jim, this has all the earmarks of something very, very terrible. with this low tech weapon of a van. well, right, andrea. this vehicle attack has become the crime du jour of terrorists worldwide. stockholm, nice, london, berlin, barcelona, charlottesville. and they learn through the vicarious experience of others and they have seen the carnage it can wreak. and also what we re seeing here, like keir reported, we don t have the absolute facts. we know spanish police are calling it an attack. but you have a rental van.
times of year, especially in august as well as europeans from all over europe going to barcelona, and the fact of using a van if this is indeed terror, talk ing about fatalities, and a driver or drivers who ran off. they re looking for several people. yes. and one of the things that that is significant about this kind of attack is how difficult it is to prevent. it is very low tech. you rent a van. you identify a spot where there are a lot of people and you ram your van into it. from a pure prevention standpoint, it is difficult to see how such a thing can be prevented in free and open societies. when you as homeland security and other counterterror officials would game out how to prevent pointing out it is very difficult to prevent, we